Actually really enjoying Black Flag. Good bit of boaty fun at the start, a weird, intriguing direction for the present/future plot, and then ten or fifteen minutes in, you're climbing buildings, running across roofs and assassinating people! In a bloody Assassin's Creed game, who'd'a thunk it.

Both good actual assassin-based fun, with actually fun sailing controls. I've learned my stupid lesson about waiting years until the next game becomes available on a Nintendo system, so I've bought a PS4 and Unity so I can spunk the rest of my year away on catching up once and for all with this fucking franchise. Maybe I'll catch up before this guy finishes his painting.

I hope they drop the drop the animus nonsense in the next one.I don’t want to be taken out of kicking arse in ancient Egypt to be two teenage girls in the present day for 20 minutes, thanks all the same.

I don't mind the Animus stuff (although obviously I can't speak for anything post-Rogue) as long as it actually feels necessary and considered as part of the whole story. I was really genuinely invested in the Desmond storyline, and while I'm really intrigued by the new direction in Black Flag and Rogue, I do feel nervous that it will all fizzle out to nothing. Is that pretty much the case?

I was really genuinely invested in the Desmond storyline, and while I'm really intrigued by the new direction in Black Flag and Rogue, I do feel nervous that it will all fizzle out to nothing. Is that pretty much the case?

I can't even remember the real world bits in Syndicate, so I'm pretty sure your fears are justified. I haven't played Odyssey yet, but the story outside the animus in Origins only very occasionally intrudes.

I was annoyed when Desmond was killed off just as his bits became more enjoyable (I think I liked his missions best in AC3), but to be honest, they painted themselves into a corner long before. Pretty much as soon as they brought fucking Juno into it.

I got Odyssey recently as it was cheap. The only one I'd played a bit of before was II, the one in Florence, AC2 I think, and I never really got into it, but Odyssey seemed to have got top reviews across the board. It is certainly BIG and there is lots to do and see. As someone with a general interest in history and particularly the classical world, it's nice to do a bit of sightseeing.

But in a world where we've had RDR2 and Witcher 3, coming to this and hearing the dialogue and voice acting, good God.And once you've been playing a while you realise that most of the side plots are just repetitive talk-to-person-kill-bandits-return efforts and you start noticing a bit of copy-pasting with some of the scenery too. And the worldbuilding doesn't go far beyond the map: most NPCs are simply called Person or Soldier or Cringing Peasant unless you do something to make them important for the game world, and even then they only get a name, no actual character to go with it.

Still kicking people off cliffs is a lot of fun. If you can do that in the viking one I might play it.

And conversely, having played AC Odyssey, I go back to The Witcher 3 and RDR2 and realise how mechanically impoverished and sluggish and janky they are compared to Odyssey, both in traversal, combat and responsiveness.

They have very different intentions and priorities, despite appearances.

I think you're right about different priorities, but at the same time I think that's still a bit generous to AC - it's not completely uninterested in telling good stories.

But I also think that the equipment and levelling mechanics of The Witcher 3 and AC: Odyssey are busted in remarkably similar ways, but mostly for different reasons. They're worse in TW3, but easy to fix. It's difficult to fix them with Odyssey because they're deliberately just a little bit frustrating.

I think you're right about different priorities, but at the same time I think that's still a bit generous to AC - it's not completely uninterested in telling good stories.

But I also think that the equipment and levelling mechanics of The Witcher 3 and AC: Odyssey are busted in remarkably similar ways, but mostly for different reasons. They're worse in TW3, but easy to fix. It's difficult to fix them with Odyssey because they're deliberately just a little bit frustrating.

It's true, I think it's a fondness I have for the game. It's very much influenced by TW3 but those elements feel very Lite, which is a generous way of saying 'shite'. I've decided to jump back in to try the add-on stuff because I heard it's actually really good. It's been long enough since I finished the main story and it looks dazzling on my new telly, so now's the time. It's the epitome of 'good enough' in many ways. The stuff it does well, it does really well and everything else is good enough that you can focus on the best bits. Even the graphics aren't that great, and I'm playing on a One X and OLED telly. Individual assets and animations don't hold up to any great scrutiny, but the overall impression is gorgeous. I think it's possibly the lighting which lifts everything else.

It's a very good mindless game, I could happily just run across the map taking it all in, doing what takes my fancy, kind of how I play Skyrim.

I can't even remember the real world bits in Syndicate, so I'm pretty sure your fears are justified. I haven't played Odyssey yet, but the story outside the animus in Origins only very occasionally intrudes.

I was annoyed when Desmond was killed off just as his bits became more enjoyable (I think I liked his missions best in AC3), but to be honest, they painted themselves into a corner long before. Pretty much as soon as they brought fucking Juno into it.

I suppose it makes sense, the original idea that the franchise would have ended with 3. Meant to be a trilogy about Desmond, nothing more. Then they knackered it by continuing anyway.

What's bothering me now is they don't seem to have given any real thought to how to replace the Desmond story long-term, and instead have made it up as they go along. I'd happily take the meta, video game developer plot of Black Flag as the kick-off to a new overarching storyline, but after a great introduction they just sorta repeated it in Rogue without building on it, and then Unity has been proper bare-bones. Am I still playing as the person from Black Flag? I don't know! I'm aware most people probably are happier with minimal Animus guff interrupting, but I wish they'd sat down and sketched out their plans for how the story would go.

Fuck but Paris is gorgeous in Unity though. Love the huge crowds and seeing people getting on with their shit. Shame the story and main missions aren't so great. Felt dead short.

Actually I probably do agree. It doesn't feel like anyone involved in making the games actually cares about it at this point, so I guess I would rather they sack it off completely than keep including it as an afterthought just because they feel they have to. I'm into Syndicate now, and the fact that the animus stuff now appears to just be cutscenes interrupting the action every now and then sums it all up really. Here's thirty seconds of Danny Wallace doing summat you're not involved in.

He was a massive prick. I remember being genuinely baffled that anyone could have read or heard that dialogue and thought it was funny sarcastic banter rather than just a man constantly fucking having a go in a really humourless way.

IIRC they made him a bit more likeable in AC3, but then to compensate they had Desmond's dad come in as an absolute cast-iron wanker.

I finally picked up Odyssey (the Greek one) a month or two ago. Got about 8 hours in before a lost autosave type thing set me back an hour or two and I pretty much just said “fuck it” and haven’t touched it since. Not that it’s especially bad, it’s obviously had an incredible amount of work put into it but it’s almost too big for its own good, not to mention the sheer grind of it all. I went back to RDR2 again instead and it’s almost laughable how much better-quality it is, in every aspect.

This new one - I dunno. I expect they’ll be carrying along the path set by Origins/Odyssey, but I hope they manage to make it more fun. As it stands, Syndicate was the last one I properly got into.